Resisting the tides

Indigenous environmental perspectives: Challenging the oceanic security state

“…Rather than solely focus on challenges to state-centric power or resource extraction in terrestrial locales, here we concentrate on the oceanic registers of Indigenous resistance to occupation and militarism in aqueous places as they offer important but distinct forms of place-based opposition. Indeed, environmental threats, sovereignty, and decolonization are central fights for resistance activities in heavily militarized archipelagos, atolls, and islands such as Guåhan, Kaho‘olawe, Kalama, Kwajalein, Okinawa, and Puerto Rico (Davis, 2020; De Onís, 2021; Du Plessis et al, 2022; Dvorak, 2020; Ginoza, 2012; Na’puti and Bevacqua, 2015; Natividad and Leon Guerrero, 2010; Torres, 2020). From the Marianas, organizations such as I Hagan Famalåo’an Guåhan (IHFG) employ Indigenous Chamoru values that inform connections with lands, waters, and ancestors to ‘promote collective self-determination and the demilitarization of the island’s land and environmental resources by colonial powers’ (I Hagan Famalåo’an Guåhan, 2021).…”

“…In the Marshall Islands, resistance to nuclear colonialism is rooted in local histories of vibrant peace movements. Since the 1960s, Kwajalein landowners have engaged in voyaging practices in the form of sail-ins to protest US militarization, the violence of ballistic missile testing, and their forced displacement from their island home (Dvorak, 2020). Marshallese groups, often predominantly women, navigated their canoes to various islands that the US military had declared off-limits.…”

“…Marshallese groups, often predominantly women, navigated their canoes to various islands that the US military had declared off-limits. They disrupted missile tests, protested the forced removal from their lands, and challenged the free association agreement with the United States (Dvorak, 2020). Their resistance through sail-ins illustrates Indigenous understandings of oceanic spaces, and efforts to create genuine security for collective futures.…”

“…These claims are overwhelmingly executed through US military occupation of oceanic spaces that are rarely accessed or seen by its populations residing within the contiguous nation-state borders. For example, the ocean is poised as the next frontier for global resource extraction in the 21st century (Hunter et al, 2018) and has long been considered as a site for military bombing, testing, and training, from policies of nuclear testing ‘Pacific Proving Grounds’ (Dvorak, 2020; Genz, 2018) to the ever increasing ‘US militarization of oceanic borders’ (Camacho, 2012: 687). Kānaka Maoli scholar Noelani Goodyear-Ka‘ōpua articulates contradictions and problems inherent in an ‘imperialist and heavily armed vision for Oceanic and world futures .…”